


A Harsh Teacher

by nikniknik



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Genre: Eye Trauma, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 10:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3847252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikniknik/pseuds/nikniknik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of how Link lost his eye, and what went with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Harsh Teacher

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this amazing drawing](http://sylphee.tumblr.com/post/117630460916/but-when-he-tried-to-walk-again-he-wasnt-a) by Sylphee on tumblr. I know the Hero's Shade is depicted without his right eye, but the artist went with left, so I did as well.

He doesn't lose the eye in battle. He thinks maybe, if it had to happen, he would have rather it happened like that. Quick, with blood and a sharp stabbing pain that he could muscle through and get to the other side of quickly. Maybe a keese claw clipping him in the face when he misjudges a swing. Or an octorock with good aim. Both of those have happened enough times that he could’ve lost an eye. 

But that’s not how he loses it. He’s not even really sure what it is that starts it. He just knows that one day he got something stuck in his eye. Just some dirt, or a piece of a leaf or something small. It hurts, but it’s far and away not the worst thing he’s dealt with. His eye gets red, it tears up, he rubs at it. He does his best to rinse his eye out in a pond he finds. He figures whatever it is will be dislodged by nightfall. 

The sting grows every day, until eventually it burns. He cries from both eyes now, curled against Epona’s side, lonely and scared and unsure what to do. There’s no one he can ask for help. There’s nowhere he can find fairies, or a potion seller. There are trees forever in every direction and they are all silent and still. There is something in his eye, and it _won’t come out_. The whole area is so puffy and itchy that he has rubbed the skin raw in places on the eyelid and it bleeds. The scabs stick his eye closed and whatever is in there is trapped behind a door of his own skin and blood. 

Everything he does makes it worse, so eventually he does nothing. The pain just becomes part of his day. Like Epona, it stays with him. Unlike Epona, it hates him. It makes it hard to fight. He can’t see danger coming, and now without a fairy to warn him he feels like he is always just missing something. It makes it harder to walk for a time. Roots seem to reach up suddenly and trip him, branches smack into his face that he thought were further away, and he flinches at things in the distance. It makes him fearful, but it makes his reactions quick. It puts him on constant alert, and this makes him cautious. 

Eventually the pain fades, much slower than it arrived. The wounds close up, the pus drains, the skin hardens and scars over. He works hard at it one day, straining to open it again. He thinks he makes it just a crack, but his vision there is gone. The ways he has learned to live with the pain, with the threat of danger, and with the ambiguity of the world in front of him. Those stay. 

Eventually he returns to Hyrule, and it is a blessing. He gets a house, and a dog to warn him when people approach it. He relearns how to aim an arrow. He stops working to try and keep that eye open. But he can never stop the flinch when someone approaches him from the left. To the few people who are brave enough to ask what happened to his eye, the only thing he can say is,

“I lost it along the way.”

**Author's Note:**

> The moral of this story is that you shouldn't wash your eye out with stagnant pond water or you'll wind up getting an infected corneal abrasion.


End file.
